Adoptive kids brought to Chicago

For families, arrival just the beginning of adjustment period

Cameras, family and hoopla surrounded Cleo Matthysse's joyful arrival Saturday afternoon at O'Hare International Airport with new parents Ryan and Sue Matthysse of Crown Point. But his new big brother, 4-year-old Preston, had a question.

"Daddy, won't he miss his nana in Haiti?" he asked about the 15-month-old orphan from Petionville, on the outskirts of earthquake-damaged Port-au-Prince.

"I'm sure he'll miss a lot of things about Haiti," Ryan Matthysse told him. "But now he has a mom and a dad and a big sister and a big brother, and we're going to love him just like we love each other."

The exchange captured both the jubilation and work required for families of adopted Haitians.

"This is an example of beauty from ashes," Matthysse said of his new son, who was dressed in a blue argyle sweater and calmly sucking his thumb.

The Matthysses were one of several Chicago-area families reunited with their adoptive Haitian children as the week came to a close.

Kim Lewen traveled to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with three other families to meet five Haitian orphans they were adopting. The children had been airlifted in a helicopter from an orphanage outside of Port-au-Prince and loaded onto a charted flight to the United States.

As Lewen walked into her Willowbrook home Friday, her two new daughters wrapped tightly in her arms, the reality of the situation hit her -- after months of bureaucratic wrangling and a devastating earthquake that stranded the girls at a mountaintop orphanage, she had become a mother.

"It's really amazing," Lewen said. "We just ate dinner and now I am going to give them a bath.

"It is just the simple things -- that they are going to go to bed here, that I know where they are, that I can wake up in the morning and they will still be here."

The dramatic retrieval, and an emotional meeting outside an airport terminal later that night, left many of the parents in elated disbelief. Many had feared the worst in the days following the earthquake.

"It was the most wonderful experience," said Dr. Elaine Morgan, holding her HIV-positive daughter, 4-year-old Djoude, in her arms after arriving at Midway Airport on Friday. "I don't cry a lot. But when I saw her for the first time, I cried. I was just relieved and happy."

But the relief was mixed with worry for some of the parents, as they wondered how children who had lived through one of the worst disasters in their country's history would react to their new lives in Chicago.

"(My oldest daughter) kind of broke up a little on the plane to Chicago," Lewen said. "Sometimes it hits her that she is not going to see all those people from her orphanage."

But, Lewen said, some of the trepidation went away when the child, Benciana, 3, saw her new room and toys on Friday.

"She saw the toys and, oh, my God, lit up and went crazy," Lewen said. "She just took everything out of the bins. It was so much fun. ... The room is a disaster. There are just plastic blocks, stacking buckets and coloring books everywhere.

In Skokie, a similar scene was playing out in Morgan's household, where one of her other daughters was getting ready to give a bath to Djoude, who was shouting in delight.

"She is just playing in the water and giggling," said Morgan.

Morgan, a pediatric oncologist at Children's Memorial Hospital, said that she worries about the road ahead.

Morgan said Djoude is developmentally behind other children her age. She also will need to go to a special day care that caters to HIV-positive children when Morgan goes back to work. But, for the moment, Morgan said she was just trying to relish the moment.

"I always tell my parents (who have kids with cancer) to take one day at a time, you can't plan for tomorrow," Morgan said. "So I am enjoying today for today."